Inside Endeavor's process to finding North Africa's entrepreneurial diamonds in the rough

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It’s been several years now since Endeavor set foot in the Arab
world, with the goal of identifying – and supporting – companies
that stand to create jobs, money, and become entrepreneurship
icons.

Ever since its creation 18 years ago in Argentina, the
organization has selected 1,030 high impact entrepreneurs who
have cumulatively created more than 400,000 jobs and $6.8 million
in revenue. Last year, the organization, very active in Egypt,
but also in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, and the UAE,
decided to expand to Morocco to help 50 high impact companies that,
by their calculations, stand to create 19,000 Moroccan jobs and
$1.25 billion by 2020.

In a year, Endeavor Morocco’s four-member team achieved an
impressive feat: identifying 1,000 potentially high impact
companies in Morocco.

This success, says Hazzaz, comes from the impressive
mobilization of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, from the
entrepreneurs themselves, to support organizations, mentors,
institutional players, governmental agencies, thought leaders,
media organizations, and decision-makers.

They all helped by suggesting entrepreneurs and by spreading the
word. In six months, they suggested 300 entrepreneurs from all
sectors in Morocco that could have a high impact. Then the Endeavor
Morocco team conducted a study that led them to identify 700
fast-growth companies in Casablanca.

Why such excitement? For Hazzaz, it’s a matter of timing.
“Endeavor looked at Morocco a few years back, but the ecosystem
wasn’t ready yet,” he says. Now, things have changed:
entrepreneurship is on everybody’s lips, the government started
many initiatives to help companies see the light of day, and grow.

Morocco’s got talent

For now, the organization has met 100 of those entrepreneurs, 50
of whom show real potential, and has started the selection process.
For Hazzaz, there’s no shortage of talented Moroccan entrepreneurs;
it’s just that their potential isn’t realized. “We have huge
potential, we simply need to work on it,” he explains.

He takes, for example, two entrepreneurs who’ve already joined
the Endeavor network (pictured above with Endeavor Global’s
president Fernando Fabre, Endeavor Morocco’s president Moulay Hafid
Elalamy, and Hazzaz).

Yousef Chaqor created Kilimanjero, a company that collects
used cooking oil from restaurants and hotels and resells it to
foreign biodiesel manufacturers, thus creating an entirely new
sector in Morocco that helps reduce water pollution and brings in
foreign currency.

As for Mourad Mekouar, he created M2T, a financial transaction
company best know for its proximity payment points network, Proximo
Tasshilat, where Moroccans can pay bills, transfer money, and
purchase mobile minutes and transportation tickets. With its
1,700 payment points, the company caters to 2 million Moroccans per
month.

So why do Moroccans continue to lack self-confidence? “First of
all, we focus too much on our shortcomings,” explains Hazzaz.
“We’re a nation like any other, we have shortcomings, but we have
to learn to live with them and focus on our advantages, and on
fulfilling our potential.”

The fact that Moroccan media rarely talks about Moroccan success
stories might also have something to do with it, he believes. Media
sites don’t talk about successful entrepreneurs, he says, and
successful Moroccan entrepreneurs don’t like to talk. “People are
afraid that talking about their success will bring the bad eye on
them. They’re not comfortable with success, they feel talking about
it is bragging.”

And yet, sharing those positive stories is crucial, he
continues. “To increase the number of success stories, you have to
show success, and even more importantly, continuous
experimentation,” he explains, because this will convince young
people that success is possible, and inspire them to go for it.
This is why Hazzaz has made the popularization of success stories a
personal challenge.

Create new success stories

What entrepreneurs need as well is someone to push, and inspire
them. “We often see entrepreneurs who have reached a certain level
of comfort, and are not looking to go further,” he says. When we
tell them entrepreneurs have a responsibility to create jobs and
value for their community, and that, if they can create 10 jobs,
they should, they agree.”

Another important factor is perspective, and exchange. “Often,
entrepreneurs are so focused on their daily work that they forget
to focus on in-depth issues. That’s where we come in.”

In Morocco, as in all countries where Endeavor is implemented,
companies accepted to the network benefit from an operational and
strategic diagnostic drafted by the organization, a consultative
board for 18 months, and services from consulting agencies, such as
Bain & Company, Ernst & Young, and entrepreneurship
programs at Stanford and Harvard universities.

Still, the real value of the program lies more on the very rich,
entrepreneur-focused selection program. “We want to know the
person, their value, passion, and history, only then do we want to
know the entrepreneur, and then finally the company.”

If, after a first exchange, the local Endeavor team thinks the
entrepreneur has the ambition and means to have a real impact, they
invite him or her to chat with a mentor they’ve hand-picked to help
him or her work on a point that needs improvement. If this meeting
goes well, the entrepreneur is invited to take some time to process
the feedback, and meet another mentor to discuss another potential
point of improvement. This can be replicated with another local
mentor and then an international mentor.

After those five discussions, the entrepreneur gains access to
the national then international selection process, during which
they will get two sessions with three high-level mentors, such as
AOL founder Steve Case, or LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.

With an in-depth process like this, it’s easy to understand why
Walid El Alaoui Mrani, Azur
System’s founder, currently ongoing interviews with local
mentors, likes to say: “with every chat, I feel like I leap six
months forward.”